Her thought went away from herself to others.
The heavenly sphere into which she had come through submission to her Father's will and a humble looking to God for help and comfort began to pervade her soul and fill it with that divine self-forgetting which all who come spiritually near to him must feel.
She could not go out and do strong and widely-felt work for humanity, could not lift up the fallen, nor help the weak, nor visit the sick, nor comfort the prisoner, though often her heart yearned to help and strengthen the suffering and the distressed.

But few if any could come into the chamber where most of her days were spent without feeling the sphere of her higher and purer life, and many, influenced thereby, went out to do the good works to which she so longed to put her hands.

So from the narrow bounds of her chamber went daily a power for good, and many who knew her not were helped or comforted or lifted into purer and better lives because of her patient submission to God and reception of his love into her soul.
It is not surprising that one thought took a deep hold upon her.

The real cause of Archie's death was the wine he had taken in the house of her friend.

But for that he could never have lost his way in the streets of his native city, never have stepped from solid ground into the engulfing water.
The lesson of this disaster was clear, and as Mrs.Voss brooded over it, the folly, the wrong--nay, the crime--of those who pour out wine like water for their guests in social entertainments magnified themselves in her thought, and thought found utterance in speech.